Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bassexpander]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353998,00.html

[Cheonmunka]

That's too bad. Nice story. Interesting about the naval cannonball.

[Join Me]

When I was in Vietnam it was pretty depressing to learn many people still die each year from land mines planted during the Vietnam war. Out in the country there were many roads that were just lined with signs warning not to go off the road as you would be venturing into a mine field. War...the gift that just keeps giving.

[bluelake]

It reminds me of a personal story here in Korea. I have been researching the first US military involvement in Korea (1871) for over a dozen years. Some of you may have seen one of the fruits of that research--the return of the Korean general's flag from the US (Today is the last day it's on display at the National Palace Museum in Kyongbok Palace). However, several years ago, my research caused the evacuation and rearrangement of the Kanghwa Island Historical Center.

One day, while looking through their exhibit, I was looking at a display case filled with different sized and shaped cannonballs. One of them caught my eye; the identification tag said "Choson dynasty", but looking at it told me something else. It was an American Civil War-era 12-pdr. shell, about 4" in diameter; it was easy to tell, not only from its size, but also because of the Borman fuse that was still intact. That type of fuse was a disk made out of tin that was screwed into the projectile. It had numbers from 0 to 5-3/4 (seconds); you punched the number of how many seconds delay you wanted before the shell exploded. The shell in their exhibit had an intact fuse and had not been punched; the shell was live.

I showed a friend of mine from the Korea Military Academy who was with me. He called the director of the museum. I heard the following day that the director couldn't sleep all night and had an army disposal team take the shell out the next morning. Actually, they took all the shells out, including solid shot. When you see the exhibit now, there are only a few small solid shots in the exhibit.

It's too bad that the military probably detonated the shell (I never got a clear answer), as it would have been a great display piece from the 1871 military action.

Here is the shell as it was in the exhibit:



Here is the description that went with it:



Here is a close-up of the Borman fuse:



Here is a fragment of a 12-pdr. I found on Kanghwa Island:

[spliff]

My next door neighbor died in a solvent fire while cleaning his revolutionary war rifles.

[Pluto]

I've always been interested in World War I, though I've heard there still remains some UXO in the Eastern hills of France from the war after all of these years. Does anyone know if that is true?

[sunnyvale]

Rasmus?

[canuckistan]

Darwin Award time? Apparently he was going at it with a drill or grinder. Personally, I'd give any unexploded ordinance a wide berth.

Since my time is occupied with vintage trailers these days, I'll recount a story about a guy removating his old Airstream.
All wood inside, he refinished all the wood and laid down a hardwood floor to boot.
Finishes varnishing everything, goes home to tell the wife, they go look at it--he steps into the freshly-varnished trailer lighting up a smoke at the same time.

KA- BOOM!

He'd failed to open any windows for ventilation of the (highly flammable) varnish fumes.
Needless to say his face got rather cooked.

[bluelake]

[JMO]

[poet13]

My ex-bro in law and his father spent summers "battlefielding" in France. Bro in law would have been anywhere from 8 to 13 years old I think. Apparently my brother in law more than once brought home live stuff, and once a live stick grenade. No accidents though.